I went out today by myself and it was the perfect day sailing… winds were light at about 10 knots and the sea was calm with only 2 ft swells or so.
Leaving the dock was smooth and the motor down the waterway went quickly with the tide going out… 5.5 knots over water and 7.5 to 8 knots over land with the current also carrying me out. The 5 miles to the inlet went fast.
Bending on the mainsail didn’t go as smoothly with the new pre-feeder as It did when I tested it at the dock…. i was very frustrated till I realized that the main halyard had gotten wrapped around another block on a track set on the cabin top and was causing a lot of friction. Once that was fixed It went straight up. I can now raise the main hand over hand all the way up without even using the winch or going to the mast to unjam it..
On the way out the inlet just before putting the main up I passed Jay on his boat Walkabout, a Jeanneau 43 heading back in to pick up some passangers.
Once out on the ocean I played with the tiller tamer and also with using a bungee cord as a tiller tamer.. The bungee cord works better when there is light pull on the tiller and the tiller tamer when there is more pressure. With the bungee you can steer without loosening anything up if you have to though. I really liked it over the tiller tamer I have.
My first stop was the fishing bouy we used yesterday for the race about 3 miles from the mouth of the inlet on a course of 130. … I kept forgetting to mark it as we went around it yeserday while racing. Today I marked it so that I have it for the next time we race to it. From there I headed to the sherman with is a wreck about 6 miles offshore. I only made it about halfway before turning back to go play with Jay on his Jeanneau 43… If I had known how fast he was I would have kept going and let him catch up 🙂 But we had fun… I tacked back and forth and did some downwind sailing beside his boat and was impressed that Sea Puppy was able to keep up as well as she did.. Walkabout has about 20 ft more waterline than sea puppy and the way we were sailing yesterday they only had a1/2 to 1 knot advantage.. I couldn’t keep up but didn’t fall behind to fast.
about 4 in the afternoon I went back in and thinking that another boat that was anchored behind Bird Island was Sea Haven which is owned by Angela the head of our sailing club I motored over to say hi… it wasn’t her but while back there I decided to put around and chart how deep different places there were….. so im back in a corner with about 10 feet of water under me.. about 3 ft from the shore with it rapidly shallowing out.. behind me about 80 feet away are two boats anchored with the wind pushing me torward the shore only a few feet away.
I was just turning to head back out to the inlet when my engine stops going brrrrrrrrrrrrr and starts going brr….rrr.rrr………rr..r……………………………………………………………………….. dead silence from your engine isn’t what you want to hear when your 1 minute away from being blown aground in the shallows. This wasn’t good!!!! I jumped up and raced forward to the bow anchor locker and hauled the anchor out and chucked it over the side praying hard 🙂 it bit the first time and held with me just clear of going aground. I had not thought you could get the anchor out and deployed from the locker that quick but I was glad to be proved wrong.
Back to the engine…first thing I check is fuel……. 🙁 ummm well … ok I should have checked the fuel before leaving the dock. Bone dry… but on the positive side…… I always carry an extra 2 gallon tank of pre-mixed fuel onboard… so I put that in the tank and crank the engine back up.. brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…. good deal… 🙂
now I go forward to pull up anchor…. ummm. … well it got a good bite on the bottom and the current and wind are both pushing on the boat. I can’t pull the boat an inch up torward the anchor…. hmmmm complications complications…. ok…. go back and motor in circle around anchor and pull it free.. run forward really quick and haul it aboard before the wind and current push me aground and then run back to the cockpit and put the motor in forward and get the heck out of dodge….. amazingly enough all this actually happend in the correct order and as if I knew what I was doing….. maybe it was having an audience in the boats around me.. lol… it was a live audition 🙂
Once back in the inlet I’m heading back torward the marina when the engine again died… I just sat there for 20 seconds or so just thinking a quiet "Shiittttttttttt…. this isn’t my day" this timeI was about 2 minutes from being blown aground. This time I tried the engine a couple times before going to throw the anchor over…. It did catch and start running again, no anchor needed…… I think maybe there was just an air bubble or something that caused it to die………
This whole sequence of events has really made me thank full that I had the anchor all neatly laid out to be deployed from the anchor well. It did make me realize how dependent I am under some conditions on the motor though. I think I am going to make it a priority to make a yuloh for paddling with.. I have an oar on board but with the fairly high freeboard that Sea Puppy has it is very hard to use.. It would not have been enough against the wind and current there. I think A yoluh would work better.
The rest of the trip back was very anti-climatic….. I really enjoyed the bungee tiller tamer method for motoring up the ICW. I’m getting the docking single handed down pat…. I’ve slowed down a lot.. now when I pull up it is to a dead stop just a few inches away from the dock so that I can just step off the boat and tie up. Both my bow and stern lines are quite long. I can easily hold both of them from the cocpit as I step off the boat and have total control of the boat.
another fun and successfull day on the water and valuable lessons learned with no damage. The way you want all such lessons to turn out.
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